A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s3.124

c8.s3.124

**Note on the ‘Brihaspatisūtras’ :**—We have endeavoured to describe in the above pages what we conceive to be the leading political ideas of the early schools and teachers of the Arthaśāstra, in so far as these have been preserved for us by the citations of Kauṭilya and of the Brāhmaṇa canonists. While on this subject, we may consider a short collection of aphorisms on nīti (general morality) that is attributed to Brihaspati and purports to embody the sage's address to Indra, the king of the gods. The ‘Brihaspatisūtras’, as this work is called, has been edited with an accompanying English translation by Dr. F. W. Thomas in *Le Museon*, 1916. In its existing form it undoubtedly belongs to a somewhat later period—its learned editor brings down its date ‘at least to the twelfth century A.D., on the strength of an apparent allusion to the Yādavas of Deogiri in the sūtra III 105. Nevertheless, as the same authority remarks, “The tone and style and even the disjointed and miscellaneous character of the work produce a sense of antiquity : it is hard to conceive of such a work being deliberately compiled by persons acquainted with the Nītisāra of Kāmandaki and the Śukranīti.” On the other hand, there is little reason to doubt that the ‘Bṛihaspatisūtras’ does not represent the lost Arthaśāstra work of the school which is so often quoted and criticised by Kauṭilya. As the editor has rightly pointed out, it does not contain the matter indicated by the citations of Kauṭilya: on one point, indeed, namely that relating to the number of the sciences, he differs, as we shall presently observe, from the view attributed by Kauṭilya to the school of Bṛihaspati. Furthermore, while the latter school, as we learn from Kauṭilya’s quotations, treated the branches of civil law and warfare as well as public administration, the author with whom we are now concerned confines himself to the subject of general morality, of which public policy is conceived to be a branch.